The Boxer Urising (义和团运动) and the Fight Against Hunger in China

A Starving but Brave ‘Boxer’ About to be publically Beheaded (c. 1901)

The Boxers did not ‘rebel’ – they collectively ‘rose-up’ together against the presence of Western imperialists in China. The Eurocentric racism aimed at China is so endemic and ingrained in the Western psyche, that a movement of indigenous peasantry rising-up against a polluting and corrupting Western presence in China (between 1899-1901) is still referred to in many English sources as a ‘rebellion’. As the Chinese peasantry never attacked the imperial ruling house of China – their martial arts-based uprising cannot be truthfully referred to as a ‘rebellion’. The Chinese peasant armies – inspired by folk-religion and magic spells, deployed traditional Chinese martial arts against modern rifles, machine guns and cannon, and despite being technically outgunned, achieved stunning successes in their early campaigns against the Western and Japanese imperialist forces (that had invaded China decades before). Following the eventual defeat of the Boxer Movement (i.e. the ‘Righteous Harmonious Fists’), the imperialist forces of the UK, US, Czarist Russia and Japan massacred around 50,000 innocent men, women and children in Beijing – after the city had surrendered. This unbelievable figure stands side by side with the mass-rape policy that all foreign troops engaged in (an act of brutality supported by the numerous Western missionaries operating in the area). China’s inability to stand-up to this racist and destructive foreign presence at the time, eventually led to wide-spread hunger and famine – as Western (Christian) missionaries bought-up all the supplies of rice, and only issued meals to Chinese people who had converted to Christianity. The brave man in this photograph is emaciated due to the presence of Western imperialists in his country – moments later he lies dead on the ground with his severed head lying near-by – for daring to confront this malignant threat.